A Witch's Harem Page 16

  The Old Burying Point was nothing but a small nook near the center of Salem. However, Skinner had transformed the miles around it into a graveyard. A battleground gift.

  Where was he? Something moved ahead of me and I moved forward. The ground split and a grave appeared, almost smacking me in the chin. Moving back, I stared at it and shook my head.

  Callista Matheson.

  A Good Witch Lies Here.

  Without thinking, my fingers shot out and gripped the grave. This shouldn’t have been here, I thought dazedly. Callista, first of my line, was buried on the other side of the ocean.

  “Thought you might like to say hello to a few of your relatives before you joined them.”

  A hooded figure had appeared just beyond Callista’s grave, lounging against a tree, and I stepped forward. Head held high, I stared him down and I saw a flash of silvery teeth from the depths of the hood. Instincts screamed at me to be cautious. He liked to play games, this mage.

  “Rowland Skinner?” I demanded, hands on my hips. “You can go straight back where you came from.”

  He inclined his head and let out a sneering laugh. “Oh, can I? Hmph, imagine my surprise when I realized Oralee’s bright heart was a Matheson. Now, that’s something I wouldn’t have guessed. Your line was always famous for being above it all.”

  I said nothing, knowing when I was being baited. Got nothing on Delia. Man, she is such a pain in the ass, maybe more than Skinner. Why do I listen to her?

  The thought almost made me laugh and a smile curved up into my cheeks.

  Skinner straightened and his laughter died. “Don’t you smile at me, worthless witch. ‘Tis too late for you and your kind. Your powers have yet to reach their peak.” He sounded savagely pleased. “I’ve foiled the Seer’s prophecy by awakening early. You cannot hope to stop me.” He tilted his head. “If you surrender, perhaps I’ll spare a few of your choosing.”

  “So, what, we can sit by and watch the world end?” I asked. “No thanks.”

  “Mm, not even for one of those O’Sullivan boys you’re so smitten with?” Skinner asked and my skin grew cold. For a moment, I thought I could hear them calling for me and agony beat against my chest. “Oh, how desperately they hunt for you, Sadie.”

  He spat my name like a curse and dark energy rushed through the ground, sending a jolt up my spine. But I held my ground. I wasn’t going to give in. Skinner was a bully, that was all.

  Maybe a really strong, old bully, but still a bully.

  My fingers drifted to my wand. Skinner saw the movement and for a moment, I thought I saw him stiffen in surprise. “Already?” he whispered. “But I thought…”

  “You thought I couldn’t learn how to wield my wand before Yule?” I challenged, emboldened by this small hesitation. “Guess again, moldy.”

  I thought Patrick would have appreciated that, and for a moment, I swore I heard his laughter on the wind. Suddenly, I was glad they were far away. In case I failed, maybe they could escape. They were the most powerful warlocks of this age, if anyone could survive…

  What would survival mean without you, Sadie? Seamus’s voice whispered in my mind.

  I went to grab my wand when Skinner disappeared. “Bastard. Come back and fight.”

  “I’d rather not,” came a whisper all around me, echoing into the depths of the earth. “But my armies can indulge you.”

  Depths that began to shake and I pitched forward. In horror, I watched as earth began to crumble around me and bony fingers scrabbled through the earth, bursting into the air. Dead things were crawling out of the earth. With a yell, I scrambled back and got to my feet as the earth shook. I tried to stop it, but it was of no use. Instead, in these last precious moments before they broke free I ran forward, trying to find Skinner.

  Now, I was in The Burying Point proper, I recognized the winding paths and old trees. Trees that were now gray and dead-looking, their branches bowing to the ground. The graves here were shaking and Skinner was nowhere in sight.

  All around, dead witches and warlocks had been freed from their slumber, strips of flesh hanging from their bones and unearthly groans passing from their long-closed lips.

  “Seriously?” I muttered.

  All of the flamescript hype and this old guy who should have stayed dead didn’t even deign to fight me? He sent in minions? Zombie minions?

  “Scared, Skinner?” I challenged, keeping an eye on the slow-moving bodies. Black sparks darted around them, stitching their forms into gruesome shells of what they’d once been. “Stop hiding and face me like a man.”

  “Oh, Good Witch, you’re amusing. Are all women so bold in this time? Pity, I would have liked that,” he mused and I made a disgusted face. “Or at least teaching them their place.”

  His voice was coming from every direction and I noticed the zombies had stilled. A crinkle ran up my spine. “You’re a coward, just as I thought you’d be,” I spat.

  “No, I merely have no interest in wasting my time on the likes of you. Destroy her,” Skinner crowed and suddenly the zombies were running at me. Before I had time to react and snatch my wand, I was pinned down. “Fetch her wand, Callista, and take back your cloak.”

  My long-dead ancestor snarled in my face, her cloak fanned around me, useless as though it were a mere tablecloth. Punching wildly with my free hand, my knuckles hit her jaw and started to bleed. Something else grabbed my hand. Now, I couldn’t move and I wriggled, screaming.

  Spellbinding didn’t work, shaping, elements… These zombies were impenetrable.

  How?

  Before I could think on it further, more zombies had joined, pinning me into the earth, which trembled and I began to sink into it. Bony fingers were at my waist and clutching my wand.

  Trapped, with the dead swarming me, I was sure I was about to join them.

  Chapter 19

  Callista was going to steal my wand and kill me. The cruelty and sacrilege of using the first witch to kill off her line sent a shockwave of rage through me. Eyes burning, I desperately tried to think of something the guys had taught me, but I couldn’t spellbind the zombies, I’d already tried. Skinner had used some kind of magic to animate them I wasn’t sure yet how to stop.

  As the earth started to swallow me, an old memory rose up in me. I’d gotten myself trapped in a fox hole once at Grandmom’s house. As Freya was always far kinder than Delia, instead of laughing when she found me, she’d taught me a simple and rather silly spell to free myself if it happened again.

  “You never know when you might need it,” Grandmom had said, ruffling my curls.

  I couldn’t have been more than five and it was probably one of the first spells I performed successfully. It was like a nursery rhyme, wasn’t it?

  Little Witch, Little Witch

  Take a spell to spin

  Old gifted, so blessed

  Hearken to your kin!

  No matter the pickle

  Be free as the wind!

  Callista and the other witches were thrown back as the air spun around me, lashing with bits of fire and I found myself on my feet again. Internally, I was dazzled that old rhyme worked, but of course it did. Young Sadie had been a pro at getting herself out of pickles, whether it was the hedge, or a trap left by wily neighborhood boys for poor little animals, or a jar of actual pickles.

  I bet it would have worked on that room the O’Sullivans locked me in if I’d thought of it.

  “What?” Skinner screeched. “You used a ditty to free yourself?” Suddenly he appeared in front of me and thrust back his hood, glaring at me.

  I raised an eyebrow. Skinner was tall, but he was rather skinny, with a long face and nose, and darting, rat-like eyes. Dressed in the garb of the 1700s under his cloak, he looked rather ridiculous. His white wig was askew as he regarded me.

  “Perhaps I need to swell my ranks,” he mused, trying to grin, and failing.

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I said, pulling my wand free and shattering the web of enchantment
Skinner had used to cloak me. At the same moment, I sensed each O’Sullivan as they sensed me. Before they could teleport, I’d already brought them here. “You’re out of your league.”

  “Sadie,” echoed Michael and Seamus in tones of fervent relief.

  “How rude, trying to keep us from the party, ol’rat-face,” Patrick said and the air around me rose in a maelstrom, causing my hair to whip around my face. The ponytail was falling out and I ripped the elastic free, looping it around my wrist.

  “You’re gonna pay for stealing our girl,” Mick promised.

  Skinner growled and vanished before us. Again, his voice echoed and the ground shook. More zombies rose up and the smell of rotten flesh filled our noses.

  Patrick spun the air, lifting the scent and knocking several back. Mick leaped into the fray, wielding his sword and keeping them back. I went to help when Seamus caught my arm.

  “You shouldn’t waste your energy, Sadie,” Seamus said urgently, his eyes warring with relief and terror. I could see what it had cost them when I’d vanished. His hair was wild and face drawn.

  “Seamus is right, that’s what Skinner wants,” Michael said on the other side, wielding a whip of fire and knocking back the tide of bodies. “I think he fears you and rightly so.” He also had a troubled look, but there was a glint of pride in his eyes. “Well done, though, lass.”

  “I don’t know where he keeps running off to hide,” I said in a tone of frustration.

  “Seamus?” Michael asked and the gray-eyed man closed his eyes.

  How well he cloaks himself, I heard Seamus’s voice, clear as day.

  Seamus? I asked, startled, and his eyes flew open. We stared at each other and then he smiled. That was you earlier, I heard you.

  “Guys, this isn’t really the time,” Michael said in a tone of wry amusement as he knocked back bodies. Mick landed in front of us, cursing and spinning his sword. “How goes it?”

  “It’s going somewhere,” Mick grunted. “Nothing works on these slimy bastards. Battle magic, spellbinding, elements… They keep putting themselves back together.”

  “I noticed that too,” I said, as Patrick appeared behind us, closing ranks. “Let me help.”

  “No,” Michael grunted, a sheen of sweat on his face. “Save your energy, princess.”

  “Take my hand, Sadie,” Seamus said. “Something occurred to me, but I need your help.” While his cousins battled, Seamus closed his eyes again and I sensed him probing the air.

  A dark chime rang out in my mind as though our fingers had closed over a loop of web and sent a vibration through the night. We both realized what Skinner had done.

  “That’s how he did it,” Seamus said. “And it has one fatal flaw.”

  “Of course,” I breathed. “And if we follow it to the center…” In my mind’s eye, I raced along the webs encircling us, each one connected to the zombies lurching and running towards us. But they all led back to… “Skinner.” Eyes flashing to a large tree in the center of the graveyard, I yanked free of Seamus and ran towards it. “Stop hiding! I’m going to make you pay for what you did to Callista and my warlocks.”

  Energy speared through the night from my wand, lightning and fire-fly-like creations, destroying Skinner’s illusion. It shook the web he’d created, one that looped through Salem itself, a crisscrossing of living and the dead. I sensed Seamus’s elation as I began to dismantle what we’d discovered. Skinner’s power lay in his careful straddling of those crossroads between life and death. In a way, he was practically a zombie himself and thus, it gave him the ability to reach into the void.

  But now that I’d sensed the precariousness of his magic holding him there, I knew I could tip the balance. And send him straight to hell.

  Skinner managed to throw up a shield to stem my assault, but he was panting as he straightened. Snapping his fingers, six dark mages suddenly appeared. One was wielding a battle ax, another had double swords, two had black wands, while the other two rose into the air and called for fire. I hesitated, watching the shadows move inside their dark cloaks and wondering who they were.

  “Meet my descendants,” Skinner answered and they rushed forward.

  But Michael was there, knocking all six back, then Mick leaped overhead, dueling the battle-ax warrior and the swordsman at the same time. Seamus and Patrick were behind me, Seamus holding the Libris Ides, from which he freed the flamescript and sent it flying around the graveyard. Patrick had summoned an ethereal-looking bow and was shooting bolts of air at the fire mages.

  They cleared a path to Skinner and I stepped forward, slamming a foot into the earth and calling forth vines to hold him. He almost escaped, but one snarled around his ankle and I swung my wand like a bat, sending a bolt of light magic directly at his chest.

  Overhead, the starless sky lightened and I glanced up, grinning.

  Skinner’s body sagged and his skin grew tight on his bones for a moment, then he shook himself and sent a blast of dark fire at me. I twisted away, but the fire landed and became hellhounds. As I was about to spellbind them, I sensed the trap disguised within and instead, turned them into phoenixes, which dove at Skinner.

  He blasted them away and our eyes met. His tongue darted out and I watched as he wiped away black blood from the corner of his mouth.

  Twirling the wand, I called forth three creatures of pure light, tall and graceful as elves. They darted at Skinner, driving him back and keeping him occupied as I walked forward. I’d found the center of his magic and the weak spot of his connections to this plane.

  It was in the hole where he’d gouged out his heart.

  For a moment, pity overcame me as Skinner fell to his knees in front of me and my creatures surrounded him. To have no heart, nothing but emptiness, worse than the void itself…

  “Pathetic,” Skinner spat and he threw out a bolt of dark energy.

  It hit my heart and I fell to my knees, gasping. My wand clattered to the ground as I wrapped my arms around myself and cried out in anguish. Skinner picked it up and laughed.

  “Sadie!”

  Voices were calling my name, crying for me, but my eyes were misting and the world was vanishing into a veil of silence. I was falling away, lost and alone.

  For a moment, I was nothing but a child again, one who’d strayed too far from home.

  Tears tracked down my face. I couldn’t remember anything.

  Where was I? How had I gotten here?

  It was nothing but misty woods, with dark, menacing trees.

  I was alone. All alone. I got to my feet and stared around. So alone, there was no one…

  “You’re never alone, you know this, Sadie Matheson. I chose you for your heart, which encompasses all beings, great and small, magical and ordinary.”

  Spinning, I saw a woman in white smiling at me. The mist vanished and sunlight poured through the trees, illuminating her. Her eyes were bound with silver cloth and her name jumped to my lips.

  “Lady Oralee,” I breathed.

  “Tis I,” she said with an impish laugh. “I laid a secret spell on my bloodline, knowing Skinner would use his dirty tricks to try to blind you and steal your power.” She gave a shrug. “He was always very predictable.”

  “He has my wand, and oh, the guys,” I said, as the memories returned in a rush. I glanced over my shoulder as though they’d be fighting in the distance. But it was nothing but beautiful hills and woods, stretching to a distant sea and a tower of white stone.

  “Skinner has trapped you inside of your darkest fears, Sadie Matheson,” the white witch said and I turned back to her. “But in doing so, he awoke my enchantment. Heed me, though, we have moments. Each of your guardians is about to fall, as are you. You are connected, through bonds of love. Skinner has your wand and he will try to smite you with it. If he succeeds, your guardians die.”

  “No,” I burst out. “How could you? That isn’t fair.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Would it be fair for them to live without you? Such a fate w
ould be worse than death. It would drive them into the madness of despair.”

  “Do they love because of you, then?” I asked, suddenly furious with her.

  “I have no power over love, no one does, Sadie Matheson,” the witch snapped back.

  “How could you choose me? Me?” I demanded now.

  “Choose you? Nay, lass, I saw you as you are,” Lady Oralee said, her lilt vanishing and her voice growing stern. “I do not bind those men to you with enchantment, they love you because they know your heart and deepest self.”

  My anger vanished. “Oh, I’m… Lady Oralee, thank you.”

  “I wanted to meet you,” she said. “I understand yours is not an easy task. So, I will tell you this. You know the way to free yourself. Just like with your Matheson nursey rhyme, the answer to defeat Skinner has been there all along.”

  She was starting to fade and I panicked, wanting her to stay. “Lady Oralee, I…”

  “Child, I know,” she said and she smiled. “Be good to them. Be good to yourself.”

  The darkness was rushing back and the light was fading.

  “Blessed be, brightest heart of Witchkin,” she whispered.

  My fingers found the charm at my neck and squeezed it. I thought of Salem, of the people there. From my harping coven to my haughty mother to my gleeful Grandmom.

  Belinda, Samwise, Oliver, Fawn and Treysi.

  All of the people who were counting on me.

  The O’Sullivans.

  In my mind’s eye, as though from a great distance, I saw them struggling to fight back, desperate to get to me, where I knelt upon the grave dirt with my face in my hands.

  And then it shifted. I saw the lost little girl in the woods look up. There, standing in front of her, were the O’Sullivans as boys. Michael, imposing, but with kind eyes and a bandage on his cheek, Mick was short, stocky and scrappy, Seamus a bony, lanky and loveable toothpick, and finally, Patrick, with his dimples, jokes and endearing face.

  Oh, God, they were so cute, I thought I was going to cry.